Fix a Bug, Become a Committer

Overview

Have you ever wondered how Selenium works under the covers? What happens between "WebElement.click()" and the click actually happening in the browser? How does that work with Grid? How can we add features to Selenium itself? What about the W3C WebDriver standard? How can we change that? In short, how does Selenium work?

We'll answer all of these questions by working through all the steps in fixing a bug in the project, going from the initial checkout of the code, through building on your machine, to landing the patch. If you come with a favourite bug, it might even be yours we fix!

Selenium is a unified toolchain, with a simple API but surprising power, that works seamlessly with all the major browsers - and yet only a handful of volunteers work to maintain this gigantic effort. If you would like to enhance your own Selenium experience while contributing back to the software that has defined so many of our careers, come to this workshop.

Outline/structure of the Session

Join Simon Stewart, the lead of the Selenium Project and creator of WebDriver, as we:

• Learn where to get help, and who to talk to, when working on Selenium itself
• Survey the different parts of the system
• Learn where the language bindings and browser internals originate
• See how the source code is structured
• Learn how to build Selenium on your own machine
• Write a unit test and create a pull request to contribute it back
• Understand how releases get cut
• Fix an issue during the workshop
• Ask questions in the presence of several of the core committers
• Learn what it takes to become one of the core committers. This free, Open Source project always needs more help

Learning Outcome

A deep dive into Selenium Project. When you leave, you will hopefully be able to start contributing back to the project!

Target Audience

Anyone interested in understanding the internals of Selenium Project. Experience with Java will be helpful.

Prerequisites

We will send you joining instructions in advance of the workshop, in order for you to prepare your laptop. Please make sure you've the latest code checked out and working from github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium and github.com/SeleniumHQ/docs.